


Gary Needs Tony (and Tony Needs Pepper)

by toniwilder



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, I have a lot of feelings, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 08:17:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15725520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toniwilder/pseuds/toniwilder
Summary: Easy like Sunday morning, he said, “Gary is coming.”“Excuse me?” Pepper walked closer, peered over his shoulder to see if the tablet in front of him had anything on it. The screen was black. “Gary?”Tony forgets to send Gary a cancellation notice for the wedding.





	Gary Needs Tony (and Tony Needs Pepper)

 

            “I don’t see why you’re freaking out about this.”

            Pepper exhaled like the air from her lungs, if blown hard enough, would reach across the table and smack some sense into Tony.

            “You want to spend the whole day, after everything that has happened, with a stranger doing…? What?” She tossed her fork onto the plate of barely touched omelet in front of her. “Risking your life for no good reason? Cause that’s what it sounds like you’re doing to me.”

            “See, though, he’s not a stranger!” Tony leaned over and snatched the fork up. When he went for a bite, Pepper grabbed the fork back into her hand and popped it into her mouth spitefully. “He’s Gary! He was coming to our wedding after all.”

            “You invited _everybody_ to our wedding!”

            “That’s not true. I didn’t invite…”

            The list of people not invited to Tony and Pepper’s wedding was a lot shorter than those who were. Tony’s brain buffered on the thought of who wasn’t coming, only for Pepper to raise her eyebrows victoriously.

            “Pep, c’mon.” Tony grabbed her hand and kissed the top of her knuckle. “He helped me save the world.”

            “Everybody’s helped you save the world,” she groaned. “Sometimes I wonder if you wouldn’t make everybody an avenger.”

            “You’re being unfair. I can’t make everybody an avenger, otherwise who would be the bad guys?”

            When Pepper let out a huff of air from her nose, her smile giving away her love for him despite her grumbling, “Tony.” He laughed. Leaned over, and gave Pepper a kiss on the lips.

            “Ooh,” he cooed. “Eggy.”

            The negative part of inviting everybody to their wedding came that, when half the population of the Earth disappeared in a snap and the mental health of both the groom and bride were such that having a wedding without half the party was more daunting than the idea of staying unmarried, it was a little difficult to send out the corrective letters to each of the guests saying, “Due to the recent international tragedy, the wedding has been postponed.”

            It had been Pepper’s idea. The side effect of seeing too many people blaming Iron Man for surviving and their mothers and children not. She swore up and down it had nothing to do with the fact that Tony barely slept, that any wedding picture would immortalize the horror black circles under his eyes and the white in his beard. She told him to focus the planning on his work with Steve, and Nat, and Rhodey, and Thor, and Bruce.

            He couldn’t think far ahead to a future of Pepper and Tony on a little porch in a high-class nursing home, rocking back and forth with a geriatric dog in their laps named Smoochums, and an iron man suit not lingering around every corner. Tony’s future had twisted out of domesticity into survival.

            So, when Pepper found Tony cleaning himself up, dying the edges of his beard back to the brown it used to be, she wondered what could spur the urge of the instinctual performative ways he had abandoned since Thanos.

            “Did you see this?” Tony asked, then proceeded to show her nothing.

            Pepper tilted her head. “The air?”

            Then, easy like Sunday morning, he said, “Gary is coming.”

            “Excuse me?” Pepper walked closer, peered over his shoulder to see if the tablet in front of him had anything on it. The screen was black. “Gary?”

            “Y’know. Gary.” Tony tapped the screen and handed it over to Pepper when it glowed to life. A transcript of a voicemail left on Tony’s machine popped up as a stranger’s voice echoed from FRIDAY’s speakers.

            “Hey Tony! I hope it’s okay if I call you Tony. I figure, after helping you and everything, we were on a first name basis? I mean, you invited me to your wedding. Speaking of, I’m super excited to see you and Pepper tie the knot! She’s great! I mean, I don’t know her, but I’m sure she’s great!”

            Pepper’s eyes narrowed. “Tony…”

            “It’ll be a great, happy change of pace! Y’know. Since everybody died, and, uh, whatever. Some more than others hah.” Gary’s voice cracked. “Like mom… Hah! Anyway! Enough about that! I’m getting on the plane now! See ya in New York!”

            “Tony, why is he talking about the wedding…?” Tony avoided her eyes with impressive inconspicuous turns to examine himself in the mirror. “Please tell me you didn’t forget somebody.”

            “Listen.” Tony whirled around and grabbed Pepper’s hands. “I didn’t forget, I just… Didn’t…”

            “Mmhmm?” Pepper raised her eyebrows.

            “Okay. Maybe I forgot.” Tony squeezed her palms. “But did you hear him? Did you hear Gary?”

            “I heard Gary.”

            Tony nearly stomped his foot. “He’s so _sad._ ”

            A pout and wide eyes. That was how Tony got Pepper to drop the fussing in the moment, not unlike how he got her to go along with most of his other schemes. And, in the end, it was nice to see Tony with relatively harmless distractions that didn’t involve the words “Infinity stones” or “Thanos” or… Well, the names of whoever wasn’t so lucky (like Peter).

            Part of Pepper thought maybe this was just another little PR stunt and Tony would drive to the airport and send Happy on with Gary to take him out to lunch and then send him back on a plane to Tennessee. That would have been a normal plan, alleviate the awkwardness of what was likely the only good thing Gary had going for him after the snap.

            Then Tony showed her the list, written hastily on the back of a Taco Bell receipt, of the things in New York he planned on showing to Gary, and Pepper’s hackles rose immediately.

            “Happy can’t come with you to the museum of natural history, he has a security meeting then.”

            “Oh,” Tony shrugged, “I was just going to take Gary on my own. Mano y mano NYC tour from Iron Man himself.”

            Then came more fussing, Tony’s soft little kiss and his ‘eggy’ declaration and Pepper melted all over again in a different way. She couldn’t detour him, had seen this look on his face a million times before and had planned to marry him so she could see it a million more time.

            “Well, Iron Man,” Pepper formally stiffened as Tony sidled up, his ass half hanging off her seat of the chair as he plopped himself nearly on top of her pencil skirted lap, “I hope you don’t mind if I come along. He did plan on coming for a wedding.”

            Tony’s eyes lit up. “Was it the list that did it? Seeing me organize stuff on paper?”

            “Oh, definitely.” Pepper loosened up and wrapped her arm around his waist. “Let me finish my eggs, Mr. Organized.”

            “All that organizing made me so hungry though.”

            “Tony, if you so much as touch another egg…”

            “You’ll what?” Tony dared.

            She kissed him, knowing he’d deflate into it immediately, and then pushed him off her lap onto the floor. He laughed, his hand still up and wrapped around her thigh, and Pepper looked directly into the light of his smile to avoid getting sucked into mapping the lines etched around his eyes. The ones that weren’t there before the snap.

 

            Since Tony insisted meeting Gary inside the airport, Pepper insisted that Tony use the back door and security clearance areas meant for crew and VIP. Pepper kept an eye on the room’s entry areas while a senator of one of the midwestern states buzzed around Tony like a hummingbird, as if standing to the left or the right of Tony might stop Tony from trying to peer out the windows for the incoming plane. Pepper kept him in peripheral and swept in when his shoulders tightened up and he hadn’t made eye-contact for a solid twenty seconds.

            She placed her hand on the senator’s bicep, gave her placating smile, and steered him away from Tony with the usual business: Tony Stark was expecting somebody else, but to feel free to always call _her_ to schedule a meeting where he could properly focus on whatever he was proposing and so on and so forth. The man bristled and nodded, flashed his own placating smile back, and scuttled away.

            Pepper’s heels clipped loud on the tile floor as she slid in close to Tony. He faced the window. She faced the inside of the room to watch the peripheral FRIDAY was already monitoring. Tony slipped his hand into her palm anyway and rested his head against her shoulder.

            Pepper kissed the top of his head. “You okay?”  

            “I love you.” The words were quiet, meant for just the two of them.

            Sometimes the paradox was too steep. Tony Stark, the superhero, and Tony Stark, the man who slept in the workshop on the worst nights—where the stars outside sent him into a panic because it all went back to Thanos. Pepper had let him be alone the first few times (still remembered her own terror of waking up with the iron man suit towering above her and ready to strike), then found herself barging into his hidey hole to sleep in sight of him. Because she had vowed to be there for him and he needed her and something Pepper could only guess at had convinced him he wasn’t allowed to need anything from anybody.

            She moved closer and closer to his cot until the night they curled up in the back of an old red and gold roadster, his head on her lap as the nightmares woke him all night long. Sometimes Pepper missed the asshole with the slicked back hair and the bad reputation. At least he wasn’t in this much pain.

            Then Tony would do something heroic and kind and beautiful and she hated herself for ever thinking such a cruel thing.

            FRIDAY said, “Gary is being escorted through security now, boss,” and the distance between them was minute enough that Pepper heard it too. Tony squeezed her hand, straightened up, and let go. His face brightened like someone had just turned a switch.

            “You ready to meet Gary?” As if Gary was the celebrity and Tony was just some fan.

            Pepper rolled her eyes playfully. “Do I have a choice?”

            Tony scrunched his nose up, kissed her. When he pulled away, his lips were pinker with her lipstick. “Always, honey-bunny.”

            Even if Pepper didn’t already know what Gary looked like, she could have assumed his identity relatively swiftly just by his demeaner. Gary shuffled into the room flanked by airport security. Laughable, considering Gary’s hair stuck up in every direction and his face sagged with exhaustion only lifted by his floral neck-pillow. He was midwestern as could be, a flannel shirt tugging a bit at his gut, but his cheeks round and decorated at the edges with an obvious knock-off Tony Stark goatee.

            “He’s cute,” Pepper whispered to Tony.

            Gary’s eyes widened when the couple approached. He quickly straightened up, tugged at the bottom of his shirt.

            “Oh- uh- Mr. Stark. Tony. Tony Stark!”

            Tony waved the security guards. “Thanks for your service, I’ll take it from here.”

            The guards, now face-to-face with Iron Man, became overcome with Gary’s energy as well. They circled Tony, asking for autographs and isolating Gary to the outskirts with only his luggage and the neck-pillow still hanging cock-eyed around his neck. He tugged at his shirt again, awkward and waiting for Tony to come out of the fray.

            Pepper rescued him swiftly. She took his hand and shook it. “Hi, Gary,” she greeted. “I’m—”

            Gary brightened again.

            “That Xanax—I need Xanax to fly I’m not, like, a druggie or whatever—I didn’t even see you I was kinda loopy. Oh my God, you’re Pepper Potts.” Gary shook her hand with the acceleration rate of a goofy golden retriever. “You’re getting married. Oh, congrats!”

            Pepper put her hand over Gary’s to slow the shaking and smiled. “Thank you very much, Gary. We really appreciate it.”

            Gary fumbled around in his pocket and pulled out a folded envelope. “I uh I don’t know what kind of gifts to give bazillionaires but I thought this was be good.” He handed the envelope over.

            “Hey, are you guys,” Gary motioned back to Tony, then back to Pepper, “Greeting everybody at the airport? That’s probably a lot of people. That’s a big deal. You two are so down-to-Earth.”

            Pepper would use a lot of words to describe herself and Tony, but down-to-Earth felt untrue. She released his hand and Gary tried to match her posture as he peered up at her.

            “We actually postponed the wedding, given everything.” Pepper made a point not to look at Tony when she said it. “But we didn’t want you to cancel your trip to NYC. Tony wanted to show you around.”

            “He wants to _what_?”

            It was a squeal. Gary bounced and whipped his neck-pillow off with sudden and fervent motion. “Like, around the whole city?! Me and Tony Stark?!”

            “I’ll be there too,” Pepper felt the need to remind.

            “Me and Tony Stark and _Pepper Potts_?!”

            “How are we doing?” Tony asked, an announcement to his stride over to them.

            Gary spun on his heel and enveloped Tony in a bearhug that sent him rigid. Pepper stepped forward to pry Gary off only for Tony to shoot her a quick ‘no’ with a glance. She leveled backwards and watched, only realizing that Gary was sobbing into Tony’s shoulder.

            “Thank you so much, Tony,” Gary was crying almost comedically.

            “It’s nothing.” Tony patted Gary on the back. “I’ve only got the day though, so if we’re gonna get started we should get started now.”

            Gary fumbled backwards and wiped his snot on his sleeve. “Right. Right. Oh boy. Oh man.”

            “Gary got us a wedding gift.” Pepper handed the envelope to Tony which Tony opened and ooh’ed inside.

            “A subway giftcard? How did you know, Gary?” Tony tucked the card into his pocket, envelope and all. He grabbed Gary by the shoulder and steered him out of the room.

            “What’s been going on with you?” Tony asked him, warm and open and so carefully constructed. “Still working with the TV station?”

            Gary babbled. She had known that on some level since listening to his voicemail but hadn’t know the sheer velocity of his chatting. Tony basked in it with incomparable patience, like he would if he were visiting children in hospitals or small-scale politicians at meet and greets. Tony watched Gary with the ever present, light smile of a man who needed this reminder that he meant something to people. Somebody who wasn’t Pepper, or Rhodey, or Happy, or Bruce.

            They gave Gary a tour of the NYC estate and Gary asked Tony why he had sold the tower. Pepper stepped in, made a comment about streamlining resources to keep Avengers away from the city traffic. Tony seemed to appreciate that, but took a bit longer to bounce back than normal.

            Gary gawked at the house. Gawked at the traffic. When they went to dinner, he ordered the exact same meal as Tony and he gawked at that too. Pepper was half-intending to call Gary’s dentist for him and compensate for whatever jaw breaking he was inflicting on himself.

            Meanwhile Tony played tour-guide, steering away from things like Central Park to focus on his workshop. He even let Gary touch an Iron Man suit and Gary nearly barked like a seal with the excitement. After a day, Tony and Pepper put Gary back on his plane to Tennessee, turned back around, and let Happy drive them back to the house.

            “You two have fun with your third wheel?” Happy asked from the driver’s seat.

            Tony sunk into his chair and rested his head on Pepper’s shoulder. “We always have a fun time—even around you,” he taunted. “Why would this be any different?”

            Happy scoffed, but his eyes met Pepper’s in the rearview mirror with just the slightest squint.

            She nodded. She couldn’t bare to speak, like that might interrupt the calm between them in that moment. Pepper only spared a movement to jostle Tony to reach her hand up to brush his hair at the back of his neck. Happy lifted the partition.

            “I love you, Pep,” Tony murmured. “I don’t tell you that enough.”

            Pepper kissed him on his tired lips and savored the way he melted into her touch.

            “Hmm,” she hummed. “I think you do alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings and I wrote this drunk because it's what I needed to write.


End file.
